08/28/2026
I’ve gone back and forth on making this post, but I’ve always tried to be transparent with y’all about what it’s like running a small BBQ business.
August has been rough. Really rough.
Customer traffic is down nearly 40% compared to this time last year, and for a small business like ours, that kind of drop hurts fast.
BBQ is a volume business. There’s really no way around it. Briskets take 14+ hours to cook. Ribs, turkey, pork belly, sausage and sides all have to be prepped and cooked long before we have any idea how many people are actually going to show up that day.
And lately, that has probably been the hardest part.
One day you might have 75+ people come through the window. The next day you might have 15. Then the next week those exact same days can completely flip.
How do you predict that?
You can’t.
But you still have to make a decision the night before about how many briskets to trim, season and put on the pit. You still have to make sausage. You still have to prep sides. You still have to schedule employees.
Cook too much and you’re staring at pans of food at the end of the day that you spent hours preparing and money buying. We donate what we can, but unfortunately some of it still gets thrown away.
Cook too little and you risk selling out early and disappointing the people who did come support you.
That constant guessing game is exhausting, and when customer counts become this inconsistent, it gets really hard for a small BBQ joint to operate efficiently.
It’s why you’ve started seeing us cut certain things from the menu. We aren’t going through enough briskets to produce the trim we need for burgers and multiple sausages. If a side isn’t moving, eventually we have to stop making it.
We simply can’t afford to cook like 75+ people are coming when 15 might walk through the window.
We know everything is expensive right now. We feel it too. That’s a big reason we changed our menu format and tried to make Smoak Town more affordable. Depending on what meat you choose, you can come grab lunch for $12-16 without having to buy a big traditional BBQ plate.
But we still need volume to make BBQ work.
As things sit right now, if business doesn’t pick up, Wednesday service will be the first thing we have to let go.
Not because we want to, but because we have to start putting our time and resources where they make the most sense. That would mean shifting more of our focus toward catering, office lunches, company events and larger orders, while concentrating our regular BBQ service into the days where we have enough volume to make it work.
Before I ask anything else, though, thank you to everyone who continues to show up for us.
We see the familiar faces coming through that window. We see the people sharing our posts, bringing their friends and family, ordering catering and telling people about Smoak Town.
None of that goes unnoticed.
We truly appreciate every single person who spends their hard-earned money with us. We wouldn’t have made it this far without y’all.
So if you’ve been saying, “We need to get back over to Smoak Town,” come see us.
Grab lunch. Bring the family. Pick up BBQ for the office. Let us cater your next meeting, party, wedding or company event. Share our posts. Tell your friends.
And even if it’s not us, please support your local places.
Go eat at that locally owned restaurant you haven’t visited in a while. Grab coffee from the local shop. Stop into the small business down the street. There are real families behind these places trying to navigate a lot of the same things we are.
Sometimes just a few extra customers on what would’ve been a slow day can make a bigger difference than you realize.
We love Smoak Town. We’re proud of what we’ve built here, and we’re going to keep adjusting, keep working and keep putting everything we have into the food we serve.
We just need some people on the other side of that window.
Cameron
Smoak Town BBQ
